a goose

IC: Nikarra (The Iron Mahi)

"I… yeah." Nikarra couldn't quite shake the feeling that some kind of boundary had been crossed - she'd kept her life before the Daedra pretty compartmentalised, so this was something of a breach, allowing one life to leak into another.

But then, she supposed, that was already done. The moment she told Vy her name - her real name - the walls between those lives had started to crack. Telling Dor she'd been in the Daedra was a blow as well, but nothing caused quite as much damage as the simple fact that she was still thinking about Vyartha, long after leaving. And here she is.

She’d imagined it so many times - imagined this, imagined what it would be like to see Vyartha again. There was a time when she thought of it just about everywhere she went - Nikarra knew better than most that this was a small island, after all. In her mind’s eye, Vy had been the same woman she had left: haughty, self-assured, with mischief in her eyes and a penchant for theatricality. Maybe it was fitting, then, that when she boarded the Mahi, bumping into Vy was just about the furthest thing from her mind.

Weirdly enough, the guitar had actually come up in quite a few of those scenarios.

“I didn’t, for a few years. Picked it back up recently.” Because it was a better outlet than beating my fists to a bloody pulp. Her knuckles were still tender - bruising didn’t show too well on purple, so that at least was hard to notice. “I’m still rusty, but I wanted to take it with me, to… wherever I’m going.”

She hadn’t thought much further than Forsi, in all honesty. She just wanted to see the sea.

OOC: @Void Emissary

IC: Nikarra (The Iron Mahi)

Nikarra’s smile was petrified. It stayed put still, but too still, all the feeling behind it turned to stone. Her eyes were drawn back to the window, or, more truthfully, were repelled from Vyartha - that was the trouble with that kind of magnetism; line it up wrong, and it'll push just as hard as it pulls.

“I’m not. I usually just… come out here when I want to be lost, I guess.” The fact that she’d felt drawn to Po-Wahi after losing Dor, same as after leaving Vy, same as after Malik - if he was Malik - had shattered her faith in Dor before, well, it wasn’t lost on her. “I’ve been all over Mata Nui, and nowhere else feels as… distant. Ko is lonely, sure, but it’s like, a contemplative kind of lonely; here, it’s just… desolate.”

Her gaze found its way back into the carriage, this time focused on the sloth she still held in her hands. She felt self-conscious, suddenly - even a little embarrassed. “I have an apartment here, so, I picked some stuff up. My guitar.”

OOC: @Void Emissary

5 minutes ago, Voxumo said:

Howdy,

Didn't keep super up to date with the whole end of the last arc, but want to check on what the status of antidermis is, at least for those who actually were affected by it? Saw some profiles implying powers gained from it were unstable but could not find anything stated officially.

Antidermis powers, afaik, are still the same. Only big change is that Antidermis has gone from being an infinite resource on Mata Nui to being nigh on impossible to find, due to the destruction of the Antidermis vat in the vault at the end of Arc 2.

IC: Aerus (Echelon's Lair)

Part of a larger picture, eh?

Aerus shifted the weight upon his cane to lean on his left hand, fingers straddling the two protosteel tines at the front. They peered out like eyes, observing the proceedings with great interest.

"Partners, then?" He held out his right hand.

IC: Aerus (Echelon's Lair)

"I'd say that sounds like an awfully selfless proposition." Aerus' smirk hadn't wavered - his agreement was already a given, and both knew it. Still, he was curious - Echelon's information network would benefit them both, after all, given Syrik's interest in the Peers, but he couldn't help but wonder if there was more to it. "You help me and I help you, right? So where do I come in? Using the network to help you track down Ambages' little cabal?"

IC: Nikarra (The Iron Mahi)

A wry smile crept across Nikarra's face, starting at her eyes and working its way down. For a moment, the guilt and the concern of seeing Vy like this was washed away in the face of the fact that her awkward fumbling was, like.

Well, it was a little bit adorable.

It was a lot adorable.

"Can't see a reason why not," Nikarra replied, as her smile broke into a grin. Vy was shy. "Can't say I took you for a beach girl."

A shrinking Vyolet.

Oh my god, that was such a dumb joke.

Now that she'd started smiling, she struggled to stop - the closest she got was still only barely restrained, threatening to break loose anytime she looked Vyartha in the eyes. God, I've missed you.

OOC: @Void Emissary

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

Muir held his tongue as Stannis' enigmatic companion, apparently named Ra'lhen, spoke. He had rather different thoughts on how to deal with past tensions - specifically, that those responsible should be held to account, rather than having their misdeeds buried. Burial, he had found, had two major flaws: the first was that what was buried seemed only rarely to stay that way, Truth forever finding new means to dig its way out into the light - bodies clandestinely hidden beneath the dirt would use winds, erosion, storms, earthquakes, anything that they could in order to be unearthed, and find justice in the world above.

The second was that the buried thing is only ever out of sight, not truly gone - even while invisible, that body will decompose, and in so doing fertilise the earth around it. Even unseen, that which is buried continues to have an effect. Only justice, and the revealing of Truth, could put the past to rest.

Still, there was no denying that Onu-Koro was best equipped to help - although he found Stannis' ideas that the financial incentive would merely be icing rather naïve. Onu-Koro would gladly offer help, because arms dealers always stood to benefit from war, and because the more the other villages relied on it, the more Onu-Koro would prosper.

"I believe they feast on whatever they desire. The years have been kind to them."

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

"Onu-Koro will assist most of all, I take it?" Muir's voice did not sound entirely approving, but neither was it a judgment - he had his own suspicions about Nuparu's recent change of heart, particularly given how it had allowed him to unofficially expand further into Po-Wahi. In business dealings, he always seemed to get more than he gave.

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

Muir knew the answer that Vrill wanted him to give.

He knew, too, that it would not suffice - it might have, before Vrill himself had undone his already questionable cover by speaking up as he had.

These were uncharted waters - he would trust the Akiri with more information than he would trust Stannis with, but that choice was out of his hands now that this discussion was happening here rather than in the hallway, or even outside, as it appeared Renaka had originally intended.

You're a real sonuvabitch, Vrill, Muir thought, and sighed.

"He is my client - and my partner in this investigation." Muir's eyes were on Renaka's, and they were absolute - his words, and his expression, carried such weight that their truth was undeniable. Still, they were not the entirety of the truth - but Muir had seen a glimmer of recognition in the Akiri's eyes when Vrill spoke, and he knew as Renaka did that neither had laid all of their cards upon the table. Muir's stoney stare delivered an unspoken promise: Mine, for yours - but not. Here.

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

"I wasn't under the impression we were staying." Muir's tone was clipped, and serious. Although outwardly, his impassioned display had been reeled in, his eyes when they met Vrill's were still simmering with anger, and-

And... something else?

Muir was, in many ways, a shallow pond; intelligent, shrewd, perceptive, certainly - but he was not a man who tended to hide his feelings, and his feelings were rarely complex, because the world as he saw it was rarely as complex as the guilty wished it to be. Moral relativism and other such constructs were the tents beneath which wrongdoers weathered the storm of their own guilt - for in a complex world, an unjustifiable action could be justified, and a lifetime's wrongs dismissed as 'what needed to be done.'

No, Muir was not a complicated man, and so it might have caught Vrill off-guard to see a… twinkle of some sort, in his partner's uncomplicated blue eyes, a twinkle that vanished as soon as Muir looked back to the rest of the room.

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

“No.” Muir had no interest in beating around the bush. “You try to justify lying - because a lie of ommission is still a lie. You say that you explained what you understood - after stating that you placed the Makuta in ‘safekeeping’, and that you understood that at the time, and still told the world both then and in the years that followed that Makuta was 'gone'. You say that any claim of vanquishing Makuta was an impossibility, that you could not be held to the standard of your own words, because dark thoughts still exist in all of us - I encourage you to look at the awakened intelligence in the Rahkshi, to feel the darkness that we have all felt return to the island, and to tell me that the Makuta is merely our darker inclinations. And finally, perhaps worst of all, you seek the moral high ground by encouraging me to join you on a quest - and you have the nerve to suggest that I might there learn more about Antidermis. I am not a fighter, Toa Stannis. I protect the people of this island by advocating for them - by advocating for the truth. The Rahkshi, due to the fact that Makuta has returned, no matter the spin you attempt to put on it, are deadlier than they have been in years. You and I both know that my death in those tunnels would not be an improbable outcome. And you have the gall to suggest that risking yet another life for answers that you already have is a sacrifice worth making?

“But you are right about one thing: Arguing with me is only as good as lashing your own back for the mistakes you have made, because it seems that you are deeply unused to being held accountable for your choices and for your mistakes, but it is not in my power now to bring you to justice, because justice is for the Matoran to pass. This I can say: the guilt you feel, you are correct to feel, and so appeals to my sympathy based on that are pointless. You have failed the people of this island, Toa Stannis, and you would rather do so again than learn from your mistakes, or even admit to them - because you will admit that you are fallible, and in the same breath seek to justify your actions, or to minimise them as the fumbling of a Kolhii ball. You have not earned my sympathy. But you have my pity, because I can see how your actions weigh on you - and I can see that if you do not change, that weight will only grow heavier, until the day that you meet the justice that you have earned, and are judged by the Matoran. I await that day with a heavy heart, because - like the deaths past and future that were the result of your choices - it could have been avoided.”

Muir turned his attention back to Renaka. “Akiri Renaka, I thank you for allowing us this audience. If there is nothing else you wish of me, I believe it is time to make my leave - there is nothing more to be learned here.”

OOC: @Silvan Haven

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

“You didn’t choose to be chosen. But every choice since was your choice. You say you 'fumbled the Kolhii ball'? You lied to the people you are sworn to protect, and left this island vulnerable to the return of Makuta. You say I ask for the truth to be handed to me? You’re goddamned right I do, because you already know it. You talk like you want people to earn truth, just because you didn’t - you talk of the guilt you have over deaths that you caused, in your own inaction. Do you expect my sympathy? You won’t find it. The truth isn’t a gift, the truth isn’t a privilege - the truth is a right. I expect the truth because I’m entitled to the truth, as is every other person on this island, because you are not a god. You are a man. You are a protector. You are accountable for your own actions, Toa Stannis. You, and you alone.

"You are not held to a higher standard - I would stand in judgment over any man that withheld information that put lives in danger. You just want to operate with impunity, and not to be held to any standard at all.”

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

“So, to be clear - you do not believe yourself to be divine, but you still play god with the Truth. You do not call yourself divine, but you still would like us to believe that you healed a man through your piousness alone.” Muir’s voice was steady, his eyes fixed on Stannis, taking in his every movement and expression. “You can lie to yourself. You can lie to the Matoran. In fact, you have done both. But I am in the business of Truth, Toa Stannis - and Truth often lies not in what people tell others, nor in what they tell themselves, but in the contradictions between their beliefs and their actions. You act like a god, and demand faith as a god does; you speak of your holy power, but you say that you have never claimed to be divine. Your actions say otherwise, as does your belief in your own holy abilities.

"So know, Toa Stannis, that I am far less amenable than you are to the lies that help you sleep at night. You tell me you do not like those claims, that you dispute them, and yet you feed them. You are uncomfortable with being ascribed divinity, and the gift of prophecy, but still you hold the truth out of reach - because you believe that you are best-placed to decide who deserves to know what? You create your reputation. You foster it. You even lean into it - your enigmatic answer to my question being a prime example. You speak one way, and act another. Perhaps the issue is not that I do not see you - but that you do not see yourself. For if you spoke true, then your actions and your choices would speak that same truth.”

IC: Nikarra (The Iron Mahi)

Hearing Vyartha speak stirred a strange feeling in Nikarra’s gut - like the feeling of falling from a great height, the kind that jolts you awake in the night. It was Vy’s voice, in all its glory, but the tone was…

Vy was confidence. Not underneath, but on the surface, she was a rock, unchanging, unyielding. But that confidence was gone, now, and Nikarra felt its absence like the loss of the ground beneath her feet.

“I’ve mostly been around these parts. Bumped into an old friend in the desert after we parted ways, did some travelling - was out in Ko-Wahi, as a matter of fact, but not in the Koro itself.” Saw a man die.

“Since then, I’ve been…” Grieving my best friend. “Living in Po-Koro. But I… I needed a change of scenery, so I decided to head out to the coast. I grew up in Ga, so I’ve always found the ocean… comforting, I guess.”

Nikarra knew that the gaps in her retelling weren’t well-disguised - under normal circumstances, she might have hidden it a little better, but looking at Vy already felt like an open wound. Lying to her was even harder.

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

Muir smiled, coldly. Stannis’ speech, unhinged though it was, did not awaken any opposition from his Rode - the Granite Guardian fully bought into his own mythology. “Ah. I believe I now understand you a little better, Toa Stannis.”

Vrill could surely tell already that another speech was incoming, in the same way he could tell that this one might just be worth listening to.

“You’re a prophet. Stannis, the Wanderer. Where you walk, Destiny unfurls the carpet ahead of you, and miracles unfold. The sick are healed, the greatest evils are vanquished - your words are even ascribed the value of prophecy, are they not?”

Muir paused, but it was all too clear that he had no intention of waiting for an answer. His tone did not beggar interruption.

“And yet, I wonder… where were you when Skorm, under the effects of Antidermis, committed the murders you yourself say he confessed to? Where were you when other cases of infection - for you admit that other cases exist - likely had similar results? Why was he healed, and not others? Don’t worry about answering, the question answers itself: You were not. There. Not nowhere, of course - you’re the leader of the Toa Maru, you have a great many duties to attend to, and a man can only be in one place at once. Because you are, Toa Stannis, just a man.

“I see you, Stannis. You hoard information at the cost of lives - the lives taken by Skorm, the lives that will be taken by Makuta in the coming days. I imagine you tell yourself that you do this to protect people, even when those people die because they do not know of or understand how to treat a curable infection. Because they have no time to prepare themselves or their villages for the return of a threat that you did not actually vanquish. Those contradictions are irrelevant, because whatever lies you tell yourself, you gather knowledge you will never share to protect yourself. To protect your status - your divinity. When only you know how to heal the sick, your healing becomes a miracle; when only you know of things that affect us all, your words become prophecy. But Truth is a force of nature, and like all such forces, it is wild and unpredictable - and though you reshape the unyielding Stone in accordance with your will, you cannot bend Truth. You believe you can, though - you believe that you can reshape reality itself with your words alone, and you believe that you can do this because you are Divine. After all, if Skorm could be healed by prayer alone, he could have been healed by anyone - but the prayers of Toa Stannis Maru hold greater weight, don’t they? Because you are Divine. And like a god, you demand blind faith - faith that you have your reasons not to share your knowledge of Antidermis. Faith that you can heal a man by the power of your prayer. Faith that you vanquished the Makuta.

“But I’m from Po-Koro. I’ve seen what happens when a man demands blind faith and receives it in turn, and I’ve seen how he brought the island we Toa are sworn to protect to the brink of war, while the protector of Po-Koro had more important business to attend to. A dictator is a dictator, whether he commands a Koro or commands the Truth, but his power lasts only as long as people have faith in him. So do not take me for a fool, Toa Stannis; I see you. Men like you have come and gone before, and the only power you have left now that Makuta is returned and your lies have begun to crumble around you is over the degree of ignominy in which you will end - because you do not command the faith you once did, not now that you have been proven fallible. Men are fallible. The Divine are not. And so I will ask you again, Toa Stannis, and I will encourage you to consider the utility of your response: how did you heal the Toa, Skorm? Because if you will not deign to share with me or the people you are sworn to protect how Antidermis is spread, or how it affects those infected, you can at least share the means by which it can be cured, so that others need not be sacrificed at the altar of your holy ego.”

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

"You said that you healed Skorm. Or, rather, that you… 'purged the evil inside him, and absolved him of his sins with a litany', as I recall." The corkboard in Muir's mind had a pin on this quote, and it was from there that he read it. "Care to elaborate? How does one purge the evil inside someone?"

The terseness of Stannis' response had not gone unnoticed. Muir's tone had shifted - the respectful, even deferential way he had spoken to Stannis before had been replaced with suspicion. Here, then, was the Stannis that he knew - the Stannis who had lied to the world about vanquishing Makuta. The Stannis who now withheld knowledge of an infectious substance that allegedly drove a man to commit murder.

OOC: @Umbraline Yumiwa

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

This was an interesting, if not wholly unanticipated, turn; Stannis’ reasons, as he presented them, were entirely valid.

And yet…

For the first time since Muir had begun questioning Stannis, he felt the voice of the Rode in his ear. The dishonesty was not hard to pinpoint - Stannis had, largely, stuck directly to verifiable facts in his response.

I do not wish to mislead your investigation or your client with knowledge I cannot certify to be fact.

In all likelihood, that much was true; after all, Stannis had answered all Muir’s questions with total honesty. The mistruth, then, was not in the words themselves, but in the intent: It’s his justification.

There were a few possibilities here, then: the first option was that it was the questioning on Antidermis that had caused Stannis to clam up, because he wanted to keep some element of it secret - at least partly true, given Stannis had asked Muir to clarify his intentions after expressing concern about ‘this dark material’, and had deflected once already before that by stating that he had only researched other cases, not observed them.

Muir considered the likelihood of this; it didn’t sit entirely right with him, when Stannis’ assurances about his lack of expertise had been honest. It meant that this assurance, too, was true - but not wholly true, at least not in the context of being Stannis’ reason not to answer further questions. Which meant that there was more to Stannis’ reasoning that he didn’t want to admit - distrust, perhaps?

It would make sense. It was hard to imagine a more common reason for choosing not to share information with someone - furthermore, Muir was a lawyer, which didn’t exactly engender trust in a lot of the public, and he had just admitted that he was investigating Ko-Koro’s Toa Team. In fact…

In fact, Stannis had provided potentially exculpatory evidence. If Skorm was under the influence of Antidermis, and it did, as Stannis had said, move him to kill, then his responsibility for those actions was called into question. It was the very reason Muir was continuing to question him on the topic of Antidermis, after all, aside from his own interest. Lawyers tended to have an agenda: to prosecute, or to defend, and they were expected to make the best case they could on their client’s behalf - even, at times, at the expense of truth. Truth was, in that context, for the judge and for the jury. Muir’s financially ruinous habit of extricating himself from cases where he was not forwarding the truth was not the norm in, or even the intended function of, his profession - he had never been able to truly stifle the detective in him.

So, then, the question arose: was Stannis concerned that Muir would use the information he gave against the Kalta, or for them? Muir’s gut feeling was ‘against’, but there was really no way to tell, and he would not allow himself to rule out the possibility that Stannis did not want his information to exonerate the Kalta either - to draw such a conclusion from so little so early risked biasing Muir himself.

“I understand. My question was as much out of my own curiosity as anything else - Antidermis isn’t a topic I had previously come across, and I’m interested in it both in and of itself, and in how it might relate to the erratic behaviour ascribed to Skorm prior to your encounter with him. If it’s any reassurance, I suspect the Akiri may know something of my reputation - I have an obligation to my client’s privacy, but my commitment is to the truth, and to the people of Mata Nui. Any information you gave, if I can verify it, that proved contrary to my expectations or to the validity of my case, I would embrace, even at a cost to myself. I left the Sentinels for the very reason that I felt we were not serving the truth, or the Matoran. Words, of course, mean little without evidence - which is why I would further research anything you said to me, and why I mention Akiri Renaka’s awareness of my history and reputation.

“Still, I understand your reticence to share information that you cannot be confident is fact. If you would still prefer not to say any more on the topic of Antidermis, I cannot begrudge you that, but I would be grateful if you would answer just one further question about your account of the incident.”

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

Muir considered his next words carefully. He couldn't give too much away to Stannis, and even Muir himself was uncertain as to where this investigation was going. That said, regardless of his personal opinions of the man, what Stannis had said was true: he had answered Muir's questions willingly, with no context, and no obfuscation or deception. He was owed at least some truth.

"I have an obligation to my client," Muir admitted, putting the disclaimer at the forefront much as Stannis had earlier, "To preserve their privacy. That said, you've been very co-operative, and so I feel comfortable telling you this much: it was research into the Kalta that brought me here. They came up in connection to my case, and one of the relevant documents bore a footnote regarding Skorm's hospital stay - 'See Po-Koro hospital files, keywords: Stannis, Warua, Antidermis.' You're not often in town, and so rather than digging through hospital files, I came here first hoping you could fill in the blanks, maybe even provide some additional perspective the files might lack."

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

Muir nodded. "I understand. In that case, what have you learned of it?"

IC: Nikarra (Iron Mahi)

"I- yes, of course, please." Her voice sounds worn, Nikarra thought. Or maybe it's just from seeing me.

Nikarra had, after all, left her. It wasn't a choice she had particularly enjoyed making, nor one that was at all affected by Vyartha herself - quite the opposite, in fact. In a way, Vyartha had made Nikarra want to stay with the Daedra, in spite of all the horrors she'd witnessed (there were times she still woke in a cold sweat, having dreamt that she was back on Gluttony's ship, surrounded by his mutilated servants). But through that waking nightmare, Pride… Vyartha... had kept her sane. And even…

Best not to dwell.

"#####, Vy. I… How have you been? What've you been up to?" Some weather, huh? Isn't the Mahi beautiful this time of year?

How was it less awkward to reunite with him than with Vy?

OOC: @Void Emissary

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

"And you've observed multiple cases? I understand you're not necessarily an-" Epidemiologist - "expert, but what kinds of effects have you observed?"

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

Muir remained silent for a time, but his eyes were alight - in his mind, he was at his corkboard, scribbling new names on scraps of paper (Zaktan, Abettor) and rifling through the details of Stannis' testimony for the most relevant. A few stood out - questions around Antidermis first and foremost, but others too (How did Stannis heal Skorm? What does Stannis know of Kalyss? Skorm confessed to multiple murders? What does he know now of the events in Ga-Koro?)

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, his first line of questioning taking shape in his mind. "The green liquid - that was Antidermis?"

"From my observations of the material's properties, yes, I believe it was Antidermis."

"And you said Skorm was infected by it? Your mention of Ahkmou - is that capital I Infected, like a Kanohi, but infecting a person?" Muir couldn't keep the surprise and the undercurrent of horror from his voice. The implications were staggering, not only for their impact on Skorm's culpability for his own actions, but in that Muir hadn't even heard of this phenomenon before now. He watched Renaka from the corner of his eye, curious as to whether this was a shock to her too - he knew there was no point in watching Vrill's poker face.

Skorm's symptoms, and Stannis' description, of course reminded him of the Madness, as they would any Po-Koro native - but the description of ichor was utterly alien to Muir, as was this green liquid itself.

IC: Nikarra (The Iron Mahi)

No way.

No ####ing way.

Nikarra hadn’t been looking around the train - instead, she was enjoying the view from the window, scenery blurring by in a way she had never before experienced. She found that she could shift her focus and change the appearance of the movement, based on what she was looking at - a fence close to the track, a mountain far from it - and let songs play in her mind as she absently stroked the sloth.

The way that time itself seemed to freeze as she turned instinctively to source the approaching footsteps, however, was all too familiar. She didn’t even know how she took her feet down off the table - they just were, and she was looking at her, mouth hanging ever so slightly agape. She fixed that once she realised.

No way.

Vyartha could make any doorway seem small - Nikarra had seen this power in action more than once - but now the whole compartment felt smaller. Nikarra did too. Lost for words, she took in her- her what? Ex-comrade in arms? Lover? (God, that word felt so weird) - she took in her Pride’s appearance. She was a little more scuffed up, and the torn cloak she wore was limp and lifeless. Her eyes, too - God, I’ve got a thing for blue eyes, haven’t I? - were different, still the same icy blue but not quite as intense, as if the volume had been turned down on them. And… she looked tired. It was a look Nikarra knew well - after all, she’d seen her own eyes reflected in the window just seconds ago.

Seconds ago? God. It felt like this silence had lasted hours.

“Vyartha?”

Stopped time for an eternity and still couldn’t come up with a better response than that. Nice, Nikki.

OOC: @Void Emissary

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

Off to a good start.

"Please, describe to us what happened, as best you remember it."

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

Muir blinked.

Ooookay… Clearly, Stannis wasn’t in a giving mood, helpful though it might have been for him to elaborate on his own.

“Do you remember the incident in question?”
 

IC:

Nikarra had had enough. And not just with this goddamn claw machine.

The breaking point, for her, was seeing that blue-eyed man from her window - for just a moment, for a fraction of an instant, those were Dor's eyes. And then reality set in; the man wore a scarf over most of his face, and walked along quietly with what looked like friends, neither a gun nor a smirk in sight. It wasn't him. Even if he wasn't dead, it wouldn't be him. And he was.

And in that moment, her heart broke all over again.

"#####!" A nearby woman covered her child's ears. Bit late for that, love. She'd already missed the Iron Mahi once standing here, but she refused to let this bucket of bolts get the best of her - she had dragged herself back from Karz time and time again, through breakdown after breakdown, from Mark Bearer to Daedra to this, and she was not about to give up now.

"Hey lady, you've been on for ages!" An insipidly shrill voice whined. "I wanna go."

"Wait your turn."

"But you've been on for ages."

"Shite, kid, didn't your mam teach you any manners?" Nikarra's eyes had not drifted from the machine, focused with the utmost determination on the hollow Kolhii ball that been cracked open by some past victim of the Pohatu Climbing Claw. In that smallest of gaps, those drowsy little eyes looked back at her, ringed with black and set above a sleepy smile. You're mine, you son of a ######.

The child was wailing now, and Nikarra heard the footsteps of its mother approach, felt the pointed tap of a finger upon her shoulder. "Pardon me, ma'am, but what exactly gives you the right to speak to my son like that?"

Sheeeeeeit. So bloody close...

"Listen, far be it from me to judge your parenting-" The tines of the claw closed around the bottom of the ball and her pulse quickened - "But I don't know that I would be comfortable with my child engaging in what is, effectively, gambling."

"Excuse me, what?" Nikarra's heart skipped a beat - the claw jerked, that last defence mechanism against a deserving victor, and the kolhii ball slipped. Nononononononono-

"Your kid would be in tears right now regardless, because he'd have pumped his pocket money into a rigged system and got precisely jack to show for it." Nikarra's fingers clenched around the joystick as the Kolhii ball stopped, a single tine of the claw trapped in the very crack that had alerted her to her quarry. Come on now, bring it home…

"You- this is beyond disrespectful, and I'll have to involve the staff in this if you don't apologise to my son this instant. You're a grown woman monopolising a children's claw machine, do you really want to make this into more of a scene?"

"YES!"

The station went quiet. Nikarra bashfully retrieved her prize. "I uh, I mean, no. Like… Sorry, kid. Have at it."

The mother tutted and rolled her eyes, and the kid's tears stopped as quickly as they had started - Manipulative little git - as he rushed to pump Po-Koro's latest war crime full of his mother's hard-earned cash. Well, so be it; she was done with that hellspawn, and the train would be leaving any minute-

"Mommy, mommy, look what I got!"

!

The imp held aloft a plush Gukko bird as big as his head, grinning widely, and looked at Nikarra with a glint in his eyes that she could only describe as true evil in its purest form.

"That's great, sweetie," his mother replied, oblivious to the fact that she was walking out of the station hand-in-hand with the antichrist himself, and Nikarra couldn't stop herself. She marched back to the claw machine and stared it down, glaring deep into the eyes of the Kakama atop it.

"I see you, demon," she hissed, before delivering a well deserved kick to the first true harbinger of the robot uprising. Surprising her, it hit back- a stream of widgets shot from the change dispenser, taking her full on in the thigh. She readied her next attack-

A stream of widgets?

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Nikarra boarded the Iron Mahi significantly richer than she had first arrived, stuffed sloth held proudly to her chest. She slid her guitar case into the overhead compartment and settled into a table seat, putting her feet up.

I guess sometimes the world can be beautiful, too.

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

If Muir was thrown by Stannis' recognition of him, he didn't show it - still, it showed that the Toa had done his homework, either on Po-Koro or the Sentinels, and thankfully Muir was still something of a footnote in either. Renaka's curiosity, however, brought a hint of a smile to his face - the pressure was increasing, and he felt at home working a witness in front of a judge.

"Thank you," he said, returning his attention to Stannis. "We were hoping you might be able to tell us about an encounter you had at the hospital here in Po-Koro, with a Toa by the name of Skorm?"

IC: Muir (Akiri Renaka's Home, Po-Koro)

Muir nodded respectfully to their host as he entered the room. "Akiri Renaka. I apologise for the interruption, but I need a few words with Toa Stannis, in connection to a case I'm researching."

His mask was already active as he scanned the room, and - not for the first time - he was glad that his own modifications had made it so difficult to recognise as a Rode. Stannis himself was here - a great stroke of luck for himself and Vrill - along with another Toa that Muir didn't recognise. The prospect of an audience made him wary, but he was no stranger to choosing his words carefully, and Stannis might even find the presence of the Akiri… motivating, as far as cooperation and honesty were concerned.